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Researchers divulge details about mummy 7/28/2007, 4:13 p.m. CDT The Associated Press BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — He was probably a redhead, tall and in good shape when he died of an unidentified cause by age 30. That's according to researchers, who used X-rays and a computerized topography scan to learn more about the 2,300-year-old mummy housed at the Louisiana Art and Science Museum. The release of their findings coincided with the unveiling of a major renovation of the museum's ancient Egypt gallery. The research also provided answers to questions left unresolved after X-rays done in the 1980s, and more...

Some people who feed birds sometimes wish they'd never see another woodpecker, particularly the downy and hairy species. The little critters often are the ones who find wood house siding as appealing as a dead elm tree. Cedar siding is particularly interesting to them and other species - even the crow-sized pileated woodpeckers. Seven types of woodpeckers are common in Wisconsin: sapsuckers, flickers, pileated, downy, hairy, redheaded and red-breasted. "I live in a cedar-sided house and have an issue with woodpeckers," wrote a Poynette man. "They seem to think my house is a great place to hang out and pound...

Blondes may have more fun, but redheaded women have a special quality that is as unique as their hair color. They have an innate ability to tolerate more pain than other people. In studies on "redhead" mice, which actually have blonde fur but carry a similar gene to the one that causes red hair in humans, scientists from the Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland were able to target the pain-reducing mechanism. These red-haired mice have a similar ability as human female redheads to withstand higher pain thresholds compared with other mice and require less anesthetic to block out certain...

THE CURSE OF THE RED-HEADED MUMMY5-18-2001 by Heather Pringle Until he first encountered the mummies of Xinjiang, Victor Mair was known mainly as a brilliant, if eccentric, translator of obscure Chinese texts, a fine sinologist with a few controversial ideas about the origins of Chinese culture, and a scathing critic prone to penning stern reviews of sloppy scholarship. Mair's pronouncements on the striking resemblance between some characters inscribed on the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Chinese symbols were intensely debated by researchers. His magnum opus on the origins of Chinese writing, a work he had been toiling away at for...

THE CURSE OF THE RED-HEADED MUMMY by Heather Pringle Until he first encountered the mummies of Xinjiang, Victor Mair was known mainly as a brilliant, if eccentric, translator of obscure Chinese texts, a fine sinologist with a few controversial ideas about the origins of Chinese culture, and a scathing critic prone to penning stern reviews of sloppy scholarship. Mair's pronouncements on the striking resemblance between some characters inscribed on the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Chinese symbols were intensely debated by researchers. His magnum opus on the origins of Chinese writing, a work he had been toiling away at for...